Peter Molyneux has been working on the game, which he self funded, for around three years with a team of 20 people at his studio, 22cans, and it’s finally been revealed. The renowned game veteran appeared at Gamescom Opening Night Live on Tuesday to reveal his next game Masters of Albion. It’s also available to wishlist on Steam.
“After messing around on mobile — what the hell was I thinking? — I thought to myself, ‘I need to come home. I need to come home to PC and console,” Molyneux said on the Gamescom stage.
Molyneux has been working on the game “in secret,” according to Gamescom host Geoff Keighley, but the developer has dropped hints in the past. In 2023, he was cagey in an interview with Gamereactor, but revealed the then unannounced title would feature a mechanic “that has never been seen in a game before” and would come back to PC and console.
According to the first look, there’s a lot of granular customization in how you go about playing. You can decide, for example, how to feed your townsfolk down to what ingredients you put on sandwiches. You’ll mostly play in God Mode, with the cursor taking the form of a giant hand that can click around and pick up villagers. If you want, you can click on a character to play in third-person mode. This might come in handy during combat, where you can fight monsters as a warrior or become god again for more powerful, supernatural attacks.
While it wasn’t exactly stated here, Molyneux previously teased that the game, which had the codename MOAT, would take place in the same Albion as the one in the Fable series.
Molyneux has been behind many classic games, including Fable, but he’s arguably best known for his influence on god games like Populous, which put players in a top-down view as a godlike figure who has massive influence and power over the game world and the events.
However, over the past decade, Molyneux has become known for making game development promises that haven’t help up. He’s previously admitted to lying to press and getting too enthusiastic about features he makes up, a move he regrets. His last announced project was Legacy, an NFT-packed “blockchain business sim.”
